Christopher Long claims that he used live-tweeting in several lectures in his article. He also says that he plans to continue to use live-tweeting in his future lectures; specifically the one coming up at his alma mater.
Long compares live-tweeting to interactive note taking. He believes that it can heighten the attention of listeners and get them more involved in the conversation. I agree with him that live-tweeting could get viewers more involved in a lecture; however, I also believe that getting on twitter in the middle of a lecture can be very distracting to someone and they may get side-tracked from the material in the lecture.
In this article written by Carolyn Thomas, she describes the issues that may occur because of live tweeting. She claims to be a part of both sides of the live-tweeting spectrum. She has live-tweeted a presentation before and has given presentations while people were live-tweeting. The problems she sees with live-tweeting are that before she even begins her lecture, her audience has their noses in their phones or laptops and they do not seem very engaged in the conversation. Another problem that she has discovered is that some speakers need their audience to be engaged to have a successful presentation. This is not possible if they are on their phones half of the time and not giving their undivided attention.
A good example of someone using live-tweeting in a beneficial way is Bernie Sanders live-tweeting the first GOP primary debate. This article has a great video that shows how Sanders used live-tweeting. He made a tweet about certain topics that were being discussed, so that his followers could see what his opinion on the subject was. It was almost as if he was a part of the debate even though he was not actually speaking in it. People could see his views on many different aspects of the presidential race.
Do you think that live-tweeting has a positive or negative effect on presentations, lectures, or other things?
Alec Writes Digitally 
October 15, 2015 at 6:02 pm
I believe that it has a positive effect as long as it is not abused. If somebody is making a positive contribution for people that are not at the presentation, then they are using live tweeting for a positive reason. If they are posting nonsense and only distracting people then I feel that it is a negative thing.
Overall, I feel it is hard to say if it is positive or negative because it can go in so many different directions. Is there a way or research already done that has information on the positives and negatives of live tweeting?
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October 15, 2015 at 6:06 pm
I think that live tweeting can have a positive or negative effect depending on the situation. For example, I think that live tweeting a debate that is shown on TV is more appropriate and more effective than live tweeting a lecture. When you are live tweeting a TV event people are already immersed in technology by simply watching the TV. Distractions are already present in the form of TV adds, so I don’t think that being on your phone or laptop adds too many distractions, In contrast, at a lecture students are ideally just listening and taking notes. I think that adding phones into the mix brings in a lot of unnecessary distractions that wouldn’t be present otherwise and could be detrimental to the message that the professor is trying to deliver to the students.
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October 15, 2015 at 6:06 pm
I am very conflicted with live-tweeting at lectures. While it can have positives, such as getting the audience more involved, it can distract people. From our previous readings, we learned how easy it is to become distracted by technology, so wouldn’t this also apply to live-tweeting? However, I wasn’t aware of Bernie Sanders live-tweeting during the debate, and it seemed like it worked out very well. Overall, I am still torn between live-tweeting, but I think in the end, it should stay out of academic settings.
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November 1, 2015 at 4:39 pm
Thanks for including a link to my live-tweeting post from my site, The Ethical Nag: Marketing Ethics for the Easily Swayed. As I mentioned in this post, I also have a bone to pick with those who fail to live-tweet QUALITY (e.g. iillegible photos of a speaker’s slides, or fuzzy photos of a half-filled conference room, or inane and meaningless live-tweets like: “Heading for lunch at #123Conference!”
The more important point was live-tweeting’s effect on the failing connection between live speaker and live-tweeters in the audience, as I described:
“Ironically, fans of live-tweeting at conferences often cite that sense of ‘connection’ they feel with their Twitter followers while live-tweeting speaker after speaker – the very speakers who encounter what feels like a profound disconnect in person. And so the traditional connection between speaker and audience member, face-to-face, is essentially being sacrificed for the nebulous connection that live-tweeters actually do value: that digital umbilical cord linked to strangers far away.”
When live-tweeters are NOT in the live audience (Bernie or me or anybody sitting around at home just watching TV), they can do what they like. In Bernie’s case, his debate tweets elicited thousands of RTs and Favorites, BUT these were likely from his own followers anyway – who would also RT his thrillingly fascinating breakfast menu choices, too.
It’s about quality, not quantity, folks.
Consider those who feel somehow compelled to live-tweet every episode of Game of Thrones to other GoT fans (equally annoying for followers who do not happen to share that particular fanaticism, and thus clearly grounds for temporary unfollowing).
The bottom line: don’t do meaningless tweets! Or, as I wrote in the original blog post, you don’t have to live-tweet just because you can.
regards,
C.
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